Public domain (30 Sep 2004)
There's a serious point here. It's that officialdom treads lightly on settled, middle-class people who are the sort of "customers" that government expects to transact online. We'll go to the bother of registering and learning to use a supermarket or airline website, because we expect to do so frequently. With government, we don't.

This is bad news for encouraging the take-up of e-transactions, which is supposed to be the next phase of e-government policy. Anyway, how did your critic get on with his parking ticket? A mixed experience. The i-Pay function on the London borough of Islington's website www.islington.gov.uk was easy enough to find. But 10 days after my ticket was printed, its details had not gone into the system. The e-form was confusing: does "please enter the date" mean today's, or the date on the ticket? And in what format should I write it? It needed a few attempts and a bit of anxiety before the emailed receipt came through.Article URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1315389,00.html